Dark Back of Time

Called by its author a “false novel,” Dark Back of Time begins with the tale of the odd effects of publishing the 1989 novel All Souls, a book Marías swears to be fiction, but which its “characters”–the real-life dons and professors who have “recognized themselves”–fiercely maintain to be a roman à clef. With the sleepy world of Oxford set into fretful motion by a world that never “existed,” Dark Back of Time begins an odyssey into the nature of identity and of time.

“[A]n ideal introduction to Marías’s work for the English reader. It shows sensitivity in exploring an entire shadowland of human experience just beyond the reach of words, and could be said to be a culminating point in the author’s long career.” —The Times Literary Supplement (London)